Let us eat quickly-- let us fill ourselves up. {Harvest Feast}

[lastofthekellys]

WHO: Kate Kelly
WHERE: The Inn
WHEN: 24th November
OPEN TO: E V E R Y O N E
WARNINGS: TBA
STATUS: OPEN

---

Aside from the days when she'd been too drunk or too hungover to get up, Kate's kept a farmer's hours all her life. Even in winter, when the bitterly cold winds that'd come up from the south and make its way through the cracks and holes in her ma's hut, she'd get up, get dressed, do her chores. But lately, it's been harder to extract herself from her bed. Benedict's been sharing her bed more often than not lately, and the chasteness of their interactions does nothing to change how warm and safe she feels. How little she wants to get up, get dressed, go out into the colder spaces of the Inn and do her work.

So, today, she's late getting out of bed - at least, by her standards. She's late getting down the stairs. She's late, so she's hurrying; she lazed in bed, and now she needs to start the fire in the main room. Start the fire, open the shutters, show that the Inn is standing and warm. And welcome, so she moves the -

No, Kate doesn't move the chairs stacked precariously at the front door as a rudimentary alarm of someone, something, coming through, because the chairs are gone. She neither dismisses it as one of the residents not getting the message, nor panics. Instead, she just opens the shutters to let in the dawn light and see if there are footprints, except, no, the snow has mostly cleared. The day is sunny. As welcome as it is, that doesn't help at all. Miss Hoppity jumps down from the foyer's desk to rub her face against Kate's skirt, apparently entirely unconcerned.

Kate eyes the cat for a moment, then approaches the closed doors leading to the main room. Closed, but with light coming through the cracks between door and floor, door and door frame. Cautiously, Kate opens one of the doors and peers in.

Then, she gapes.

The fire is blazing - hot, cheery - but so are the candles. The candles: candles on the unused candlesticks, candles clustered on tables, light up sideboards. Candles bobbing in bowls of water and apples. Candles white, yellow and red, when the village had none. Boughs of wheat, corn, decorate tables and the mantle over the fire, apples and pumpkins and collections of yellow, orange, red flowers seem to be everywhere.

And the food.

Each table is piled high with food. Roasted, baked, cooked on stoves and Kate knows how to cook, she knows how long this would all take, how many people, and it's impossible. What she's seeing is impossible to have done with the resources on hand: even an attempt would have woken up the whole building.

Disbelieving, Kate walks in. For a moment, she's entirely dumbfounded. Miss Hoppity, however, is nothing of the sort. The cat has leapt up onto the sideboard next to Kate and - well, Kate isn't sure what happens next. Just that suddenly there's movement and something large seems to lunge at her. Miss Hoppity yowls and speeds off: Kate screams as she battles something, falling backwards and hitting the floor along with a broken bowl of water, spilled apples and some tiny candles, and her attacker.

Pushing the food-turkey off her, Kate sits up and is, for once, entirely lost for words.

Comments

[womanofvalue]

Peggy's not used to someone arriving and being new without her at least knowing about it, so when she sees a new woman at the feast, she wonders if she's started to grow lax in her practice of trying to keep on top of things. She notes the food, but it's the drink that has her truly impressed. "I don't suppose you'd pour me one," she says with a nod of her head towards the whiskey. "I'd hate to waste the opportunity."

Besides, this is practically the belated drink she's been after, what with practically every day here offering new challenges that practically beg the presence of alcohol.

[ex_assertiveness90]

"'Opportunity,'" Stella echoes. There's a slight arch of her brows. "I assume you mean this doesn't happen on a regular basis."

Of course it wouldn't. If they're meant to have to survive on their own here, then a feast like this would be rare, if not nonexistent. Alcohol for purely recreational purposes would be an extravagance. Stella, who is used to both fancy hotel bars and London pubs, and to having her choice of beverage whenever she feels like it, finds that something of a disappointment to say the very least.

She does pour the other woman a glass, though, roughly the same amount she'd poured for herself, and offers it to her. The slight smile that turns one corner of her mouth is, at least, unforced; she can empathize with the feeling of needing a drink or two.

[womanofvalue]

"In six months, this is the first time I've seen alcohol, let alone tables piled high with inexplicable food," Peggy replies with the dubious air of someone who's both happy to see the spread before them, but wary of it at the same time. Peggy reaches out to take the glass with a sound of gratitude humming on her lips, swallowing half of it before she feels ready to go on.

"Has no one told you of the dire situation, typically?" she asks, wondering if she's going to have to mar the happy day with reality.

[ex_assertiveness90]

The tilt of Stella's smile when she's asked that implies that she was, in fact, being slightly facetious earlier. It fades after a second as she thinks over what she has been told.

"I'm told we've been brought here with no obvious way to escape. It's been my assumption that we're expected to survive here on our own means."

She takes another sip of whisky, carefully, before she adds, "I have the impression there are a lot of variables in this particular equation that remain unsolved."

Meaning: she's got the general idea, but also the idea that no one knows exactly what's going on or what they're doing here. She's listening to the other woman, though, her expression attentive. Enjoying the feast or not, she'd rather hear what she has to say, good news or bad. Stella doesn't like missing information.

[womanofvalue]

"There have been many factors that aid in our survival," Peggy assures the woman as she begins to pick through some of the food to go with the whiskey, knowing what will happen if she drinks on an empty stomach. "I've nothing proven, but I've a theory that there's a correlation between good and bad. It seems that for every bad thing that occurs, something good happens after. There are also the kindness of gifts to consider."

"I'm Peggy Carter," is her introduction to the other woman, sipping at the whiskey before she sets it down to offer a hand. "Welcome to the madness that is this place."

[ex_assertiveness90]

"Stella Gibson," she responds, taking the proffered hand; her grip is confident, but not over-firm. "I would say thank you, but I'm not sure that's entirely right." That's not meant as a slight on Peggy at all, but rather just an indication of how aware she is that the circumstances of their meeting are... undesirable, to say the least.

Just from first impressions, though, she's curious — about Peggy, about her take on this place.

"I wasn't aware we were given gifts."

[womanofvalue]

Peggy notes the handshake, both impressed and still vaguely cautious given that a strong woman is both an asset but also something to be wary about, in Peggy's experience. Both Dottie Underwood and Whitney Frost have proven to show Peggy that a strong woman can be a dangerous enemy for her. "They're not always so kind," she assures her wryly, "in certain cases, they can be quite mocking, but this seems to be without any ill will," she notes of the feast in front of them.

"Where did you come from, before this?" she asks, genuinely curious as to the answer.

[ex_assertiveness90]

It's something to take note of, at least — that they have not been expected to survive completely on their own, only mostly. Still, Stella is wary of this idea of being given things precisely because an unnamed, invisible group of people who can provide a bountiful feast on a whim is also capable of taking away such generosity just as easily — so it's certainly not something to be relied upon by any means.

"Directly before this, Belfast," Stella answers, "but I live in London." The cut-glass accent, not too far off Peggy's, probably says as much. She pauses, takes a brief sip of her whisky, and adds, "I'm a Met officer."

That is a detail she doesn't really mind revealing about herself: Stella is more at ease talking about her work than about minutiae from her personal life.

[womanofvalue]

Peggy wants to bask in the relief of someone so close to home, though she suspects that it's still so very far. "I know this is going to sound mad, but what year," she asks, given that she hasn't been terribly lucky with finding anyone from a contemporary time to her own. "I'm beginning to think that I'm quite the relic, given that everyone I meet is from much farther in the future than I am, being that it was only 1947 when I left," she admits.

That said, she's fascinated with the idea of what London looks like in the future, and what the officers might be like, then.

[ex_assertiveness90]

And for a moment, that particular revelation throws her: Stella hesitates, visibly. It does sound a bit mad. Maybe it shouldn't; she's just shown up in a strange village after apparently having come through a fountain, after all. The idea that people here might be from different time periods or perhaps even different worlds from her own should not seem that unusual.

To her credit, though, she quickly takes it in stride: another piece of information to file away for later, as yet unforeseen use. "2012," she says. There's another pause as she considers 2012, and 1947, and that sixty-five-year time difference. Stella studied the postwar period a bit in her first couple years at university, when she was working on her anthropology degree. She can only imagine that some of the things that seem commonplace to her would seem quite outrageous, if not outright impossible, to someone like Peggy.

But, really, once one gets past the differences in technology and over half a century of societal changes for both better and worse— "To be honest," Stella says, dryly, "I'm not sure London has changed that much."

It's intended as a slight reassurance. The people, at the heart, are still the same.

[womanofvalue]

It takes her back slightly, because she heard 2012 and hoped that perhaps there was some sort of progress, but from the sounds of it, sixty-five years does little but mark the passage of more time. She's not entirely sure how to measure the disappointment she feels, but it gnaws at her in a way that she's sure will keep her up, at times.

All that said, it's a much darker and deeper topic than Peggy usually likes to exchange over meals. "What about the food?" she asks. "Anything here that might rival what London has to offer in 2012?" she asks, trying to steer them away to something brighter.